Our First Week in Africa

We've now been in South Africa for just over a week. It's been a mix of culture shock and excitement as we have gotten used to the way things work over here.

FCE's headquarters is located in Wolsely, a quick 1.5 hour drive from Cape Town. It's a small town of ~8,000 people, nestled in between some beautiful, bare mountains, and surrounded by farmland. We're right on the north edge of town, and it's about a five-minute walk to the few shops that are worth going to. (That picture is looking looking north from the entrance of the property.) For any real shopping, and non-exorbitant prices, it's a 20-minute drive to nearby Ceres (which is also where the nearest secondary school is).

For my father-in-law: as we left Cape Town, it was mostly vineyards, but around here it's looking like mostly wheat and hay, at least from I can recognize. There's also a fair amount of canola (and they actually call it canola, which surprised us).

We've had about 5-7 hours of classes each day (including today), but because our evening meal is a 19:00, we still get a nice amount of afternoon to spend however we wish.

Zelena is doing a surprisingly good job of being babysat while we're in classes. The highlight of my day is seeing her excitement when she sees us again after being apart for a few hours.

Three other random things:

Squashes are a very common item at the main meal.

Most individual bottled soft drinks are in glass bottles, with plastic lids.